Dell'Oro Group says in a newly released forecast report on optical transport gear that the demand for packet-optical transport systems (or, as they call them, optical transport-packet systems) will lead the space to be worth $10 billion by 2019. That's an average annual growth rate of 14%.
Carriers will be looking for different attributes from such systems than they have in the past, according to the market research firm.
"The previous generation of optical equipment was defined by its transport capacity," explained Jimmy Yu, vice president of optical transport market research at Dell'Oro. "However, I think the next generation will be defined by its adaptability and openness. Service providers need these types of features in order to move to a software-defined network architecture or carrier SDN, as well as to enable network elasticity and operational cost savings.
"The right optical network elements, starting with optical packet-transport, will help service providers to realize the benefits of carrier SDN," Yu concluded.
Packet-optical transport systems are notable for their combination of optical switching with WDM optics, thus providing bandwidth management, protection, and restoration, Dell'Oro points out. As optical equipment manufacturers add open control interfaces to these platforms, packet-optical transport systems can take direction from an SDN controller to help implement network changes and service turnup and turn-down, according to the report.
The Dell'Oro Group's "Optical Transport 5-Year Forecast Report" provides an overview of the optical transport industry. The report includes tables that cover manufacturers' revenue, average selling prices, unit shipments, tributary/line or wavelength shipments (by speed up to >100 Gbps). The report tracks DWDM long-haul terrestrial, WDM metro, multiservice multiplexers, and optical switch equipment.
For more information on high-speed transmission systems and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer's Guide.